Social Engineering

CERT Advisory wrote:
> Over the past week, we have seen two more mass-mailing viruses,
> W32/Bagle and W32/Novarg, impact a significant number of home users
> and sites. The technology used in these viruses is not significantly
> different from prior mass-mailing viruses [...].
> Unsolicited email messages containing attachments are sent to
> unsuspecting recipients. They may contain a return address, a
> provocative envelope, or something else that encourages its receiver
> to open it.
> This technique is called social engineering. Because we are trusting
> and curious, social engineering is often effective. The widespread
> impact of these latest viruses, which rely on human intervention to
> spread, demonstrates the effectiveness of social engineering.

What many people fail to see, simply because it is not on the nightly
television news PROGRAMMING offered by the same NWO powerbrokers who
own and run the CORPORATE world which has replaced the world of
nations, is that there is a meta-social-engineering going on. Here we
see CERT addressing a first level of social engineering... the thesis.
Meta-social-engineering uses a system of thesis, antithesis, synthesis
to create changes in society that society would resist otherwise.
Suppose that it isn't just random teenage prankster hackers. Suppose it
isn't just SPAMmers trying to make a few bucks. If there was a
meta-agenda to all of this, whose would it be, and what purpose would
it serve?

In the history of the internet and of computer software, it all began
with UNIX(TM) and *NIX(generic) which evolved into POSIX, which is most
popularly implemented as Linux(TM) and FreeBSD and MacOSX(TM). In the
beginning hackers created the OSs and the server software and the
client software and an egalitarian linking of those compute-nodes into
a mesh of information and processing that was contributed to by all and
available to all. Then, corporate profiteers entered the picture. The
profiteers prefer to replace egalitarian coparticipation with a
broadcast model, a server/client model, where they own the channels of
information dissemination / programming, and the content, and they
become the SOURCE which therefore has CONTROL of the PROGRAMMING that
influences the beliefs and choices of the masses, and they get those
consumers to pay them for the opportunity to be programmed into passive
fleeced sheeople.

There is a corporate agenda, the antithesis, to destroy all sense of
egalitarian computing, and information exchange. Every form of
computing software and information distribution which is egalitarian in
nature, which allows "the people" to be source as well as consumer, is
under attack. Some of it is indeed just random profiteers, the little
people, abusing the system for their own personal profit... but some of
it is an active "thesis" of the covert government / military operations
and the major corporations who own and run planet Ter-Ra, to socially
engineer distrust of egalitarian communications between the people, in
other words to destroy the one remaining free press on Ter-Ra.

Thesis: Terrorists, SPAMmers, Hackers are amok, and you must be
protected from them by a LARGE solution, a CORPORATE solution... so
stop using those egalitarian communications channels: they're
dangerous. If we can't sabotage the channel, will fill it with tons of
disinformation to destroy any effective communiations of ideas we don't
want the people to believe in.

AntiThesis: We, the great corporate NWO, will fix for you on a
centralized and paid for scale, the problem WE created to drive you to
trust and pay us instead of freely communicating amongst yourselves.
COME! Sign up for America OffLine, where you won't be exposed to all
those subversive messages of freedom, to real people, but will be
insulated in our Corporate Pablum world of Leave it to Beaver that's
safe for your kids and safe for your computer... here your software
that the largest Corporate Empire in the World has intentionally made
vulnerable won't be infected with those nasty payloads we've been
generating to sabotage your computer... if you'll just LET US CHOOSE
what to program your mind with, we'll keep you safe from those
TERRORISTS out there... the corporate agents, the military / industrial
agents, the black psy-ops agents, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the NWO
who are creating the terrorism and danger upon the free internet to
make you choose the solution we offer you. BeepBeep!

Synthesis: Come to the sanitized broadcast corporate PROGRAMMING version
of the internet... something that is limited to Interactive TV so you
can not only witness the world as we want you to see it, but buy it in
real time. You'll be fully brainwashed with CORPORATE NWO belief
systems, primarily that you NEED BIG BROTHER to protect you from Big
Brother's Covert Ops TERRORISTS.

How did you come up with this crap? A bad drug experience?
This is some of the most inane rambling I've ever seen on the internet.
Almost as bad as that idiot Debbie from Washington State who thinks
she knows about hacking...

Angela Kahealani wrote:
> CERT Advisory wrote:
>
>
>>Over the past week, we have seen two more mass-mailing viruses,
>>W32/Bagle and W32/Novarg, impact a significant number of home users
>>and sites. The technology used in these viruses is not significantly
>>different from prior mass-mailing viruses [...].
>
>
>>Unsolicited email messages containing attachments are sent to
>>unsuspecting recipients. They may contain a return address, a
>>provocative envelope, or something else that encourages its receiver
>>to open it.
>
>
>>This technique is called social engineering. Because we are trusting
>>and curious, social engineering is often effective. The widespread
>>impact of these latest viruses, which rely on human intervention to
>>spread, demonstrates the effectiveness of social engineering.
>
>
> What many people fail to see, simply because it is not on the nightly
> television news PROGRAMMING offered by the same NWO powerbrokers who
> own and run the CORPORATE world which has replaced the world of
> nations, is that there is a meta-social-engineering going on. Here we
> see CERT addressing a first level of social engineering... the thesis.
> Meta-social-engineering uses a system of thesis, antithesis, synthesis
> to create changes in society that society would resist otherwise.
> Suppose that it isn't just random teenage prankster hackers. Suppose it
> isn't just SPAMmers trying to make a few bucks. If there was a
> meta-agenda to all of this, whose would it be, and what purpose would
> it serve?
>
> In the history of the internet and of computer software, it all began
> with UNIX(TM) and *NIX(generic) which evolved into POSIX, which is most
> popularly implemented as Linux(TM) and FreeBSD and MacOSX(TM). In the
> beginning hackers created the OSs and the server software and the
> client software and an egalitarian linking of those compute-nodes into
> a mesh of information and processing that was contributed to by all and
> available to all. Then, corporate profiteers entered the picture. The
> profiteers prefer to replace egalitarian coparticipation with a
> broadcast model, a server/client model, where they own the channels of
> information dissemination / programming, and the content, and they
> become the SOURCE which therefore has CONTROL of the PROGRAMMING that
> influences the beliefs and choices of the masses, and they get those
> consumers to pay them for the opportunity to be programmed into passive
> fleeced sheeople.
>
> There is a corporate agenda, the antithesis, to destroy all sense of
> egalitarian computing, and information exchange. Every form of
> computing software and information distribution which is egalitarian in
> nature, which allows "the people" to be source as well as consumer, is
> under attack. Some of it is indeed just random profiteers, the little
> people, abusing the system for their own personal profit... but some of
> it is an active "thesis" of the covert government / military operations
> and the major corporations who own and run planet Ter-Ra, to socially
> engineer distrust of egalitarian communications between the people, in
> other words to destroy the one remaining free press on Ter-Ra.
>
> Thesis: Terrorists, SPAMmers, Hackers are amok, and you must be
> protected from them by a LARGE solution, a CORPORATE solution... so
> stop using those egalitarian communications channels: they're
> dangerous. If we can't sabotage the channel, will fill it with tons of
> disinformation to destroy any effective communiations of ideas we don't
> want the people to believe in.
>
> AntiThesis: We, the great corporate NWO, will fix for you on a
> centralized and paid for scale, the problem WE created to drive you to
> trust and pay us instead of freely communicating amongst yourselves.
> COME! Sign up for America OffLine, where you won't be exposed to all
> those subversive messages of freedom, to real people, but will be
> insulated in our Corporate Pablum world of Leave it to Beaver that's
> safe for your kids and safe for your computer... here your software
> that the largest Corporate Empire in the World has intentionally made
> vulnerable won't be infected with those nasty payloads we've been
> generating to sabotage your computer... if you'll just LET US CHOOSE
> what to program your mind with, we'll keep you safe from those
> TERRORISTS out there... the corporate agents, the military / industrial
> agents, the black psy-ops agents, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the NWO
> who are creating the terrorism and danger upon the free internet to
> make you choose the solution we offer you. BeepBeep!
>
> Synthesis: Come to the sanitized broadcast corporate PROGRAMMING version
> of the internet... something that is limited to Interactive TV so you
> can not only witness the world as we want you to see it, but buy it in
> real time. You'll be fully brainwashed with CORPORATE NWO belief
> systems, primarily that you NEED BIG BROTHER to protect you from Big
> Brother's Covert Ops TERRORISTS.
>
> I Love Big Brother!
>
> War is Peace
> Ignorance is Strength
> Freedom is Slavery
>
> Yes, there is definitely some social engineering going on.
> http://www.kahealani.com/articles/matrix.html
>

The entire problem with your thesis is that it takes computer illiterates
for this "social engineering" to work on. Lord knows the world is full of
them, but they don't have to be.

Simply not downloading and/or opening email containing unknown attachments
would make both these worms completely innocuous. This is the simplest
kindergarten form of computer security consciousness, and the rank and file
have no excuse not to know about it. Simply watch CNN or any of the other
news channels and you'll be told exactly what I just said.

Simply refusing to use Outlook Express would make the computer world 95%
safer. Forget Windows - Windows is fine without OE and IE as gaping
security breeches, open to allow exploiters to harm your system.

Individual ISPs could go a long ways to help protect their subscribers, but
most don't. It's better to grin, pretend nothing's wrong, and take the
money.

<snip>
> Simply refusing to use Outlook Express would make the computer world 95%
> safer. Forget Windows - Windows is fine without OE and IE as gaping
> security breeches, open to allow exploiters to harm your system.
>
> Individual ISPs could go a long ways to help protect their subscribers,
but
> most don't. It's better to grin, pretend nothing's wrong, and take the
> money

Even more depressing is that these same ISPs seem to spend oodles of time
"branding" a browser that they don't actually own.. and when a registry key
a couple of bytes to the left (so to speak) would activate basic security.

Not sure what that says about mundanes, but it says an awful lot about the
attitudes of some techies...

--

Hairy One Kenobi

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this opinion do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the highly-opinionated person expressing the opinion
in the first place. So there!

>Angela Kahealani <> wrote in
>news::
>Simply refusing to use Outlook Express would make the computer world 95%
>safer. Forget Windows - Windows is fine without OE and IE as gaping
>security breeches, open to allow exploiters to harm your system.

There are some viruses that can infect your computer without using OE or
IE. In fact, those are the viruses that have been most sucessful.

So the only way you can really protect your system is to take it off the
networks and put it into a room with a locked door.

Or you can get Antivirus software and update that every day...

--
Ben M.

----------------
What are Software Patents for?
To protect the small enterprise from bigger companies.

What do Software Patents do?
In its current form, they protect only companies with
big legal departments as they:
a.) Patent everything no matter how general
b.) Sue everybody. Even if the patent can be argued
invalid, small companies can ill-afford the
typical $500k cost of a law-suit (not to mention
years of harassment).

Don't let them take away your right to program
whatever you like. Make a stand on Software Patents
before its too late.

In article <WQkSb.1232$>,
Ben Measures <> wrote:
> >Angela Kahealani <> wrote in
> >news::
> >Simply refusing to use Outlook Express would make the computer world 95%
> >safer. Forget Windows - Windows is fine without OE and IE as gaping
> >security breeches, open to allow exploiters to harm your system.
>
> There are some viruses that can infect your computer without using OE or
> IE. In fact, those are the viruses that have been most sucessful.

There may be some, but the most problems in the past few years have
indeed come from email worms that depend on OE. Maybe 95% is
overstating it, but I'd guess it's at least 75%.

Barry Margolin wrote:
> In article <WQkSb.1232$>,
> Ben Measures <> wrote:
>
>
>>>Angela Kahealani <> wrote in
>>>news::
>>>Simply refusing to use Outlook Express would make the computer world 95%
>>>safer. Forget Windows - Windows is fine without OE and IE as gaping
>>>security breeches, open to allow exploiters to harm your system.
>>
>>There are some viruses that can infect your computer without using OE or
>>IE. In fact, those are the viruses that have been most sucessful.
>
>
> There may be some, but the most problems in the past few years have
> indeed come from email worms that depend on OE. Maybe 95% is
> overstating it, but I'd guess it's at least 75%.
>

I regret saying
> In fact, those are the viruses that have been most sucessful.
it was wrong. Please allow me to retract it

However the rest of my post still holds true. I was trying to point out
that Windows isn't "fine" without OE and IE. There are other holes in
the OS, holes that many viruses have used in the past. If IE and OE
weren't so good as "computer access gateways", then those holes would
become much more apparent.

--
Ben M.

----------------
What are Software Patents for?
To protect the small enterprise from bigger companies.

What do Software Patents do?
In its current form, they protect only companies with
big legal departments as they:
a.) Patent everything no matter how general
b.) Sue everybody. Even if the patent can be argued
invalid, small companies can ill-afford the
typical $500k cost of a law-suit (not to mention
years of harassment).

Don't let them take away your right to program
whatever you like. Make a stand on Software Patents
before its too late.

Guest

Franc Zabkar <> wrote:
> On 28 Jan 2004 09:24:05 GMT, donutbandit <> put finger to
> keyboard and composed:
>>Simply refusing to use Outlook Express would make the computer world 95%
>>safer.
> ... but only until attention is diverted to the next most popular
> email client. Personally I'm quite happy for the vast bulk of OE users
> to be the primary malware targets.

The alternative mailreaders are not even close to beeing so bloated
and cluless. It's not an issue of MS beeing widley used, it's an
issue of MS OE badly written, overspeced, bloated and doing all
kind of stuff it should not do.

'pine' is an example of a mailreader doing what a mailreader is
supoposed to do ( reading/writing 2822-type messages )

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